Meet Erika

I’ve been getting boils for as long as I can remember, since high school if not earlier. One of my family doctors diagnosed me with HS in either 2012 or 2013, I don’t remember which.

The biggest challenge I have living with the disease is being cautious about the clothes I wear. There are a couple of shirts I’d love to put on, but I’d be afraid of staining them. If I didn’t have HS, I wouldn’t be afraid to shave my underarms. I would be free to wear what I want.

Whenever I have a nodule my Dermatologist will inject it with a steroid that cools down the flare. Normally the HS pain is in the background of my life, but sometimes I have open wounds that feel raw and get quite painful. I don’t take anything stronger than Tylenol or ibuprofen for the pain though, because I don’t want to get hooked.

Since antibiotics help to keep the underlying infection down, it feels like I’ve been taking them forever, but recently I’m trying something new that I’m excited about. I found a YouTube video where a woman has HS under her arms like I do. She uses something called Hibiclens [a liquid antimicrobial skin soap] to wash her underarms.

Then she takes a turmeric vitamin every night with some AZO yeast pills, and she says it’s helped her tremendously. I started myself on her regimen a couple days ago so I don’t know how or if it will do anything,